The analog is rooted in the old school. An old gauge that sweeps and might not be 100% right but is probably pretty close. A mechanical device, of or pertaining to a mechanism that represents data by measurement of a continuous physical variable, as voltage or pressure.

The famous analog keyboards that make up a crux of the tunes on this site:

Hammond Organ – B3 & variants – “The Hammond” or anything mentioning “B3″
The Wurlitzer Electric Jazz Piano (what Ray Charles played) – “The Wurlitzer”
The Fender Rhodes Electric Jazz Piano (what Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea played) – “The Rhodes”
The Hohnet Clavinet – “The Clav” or “The Clavinet” – Funky!

and a few others but these take the cake though…

A good honorable mention is the Moog, the first electric synthesizer which was also analog…

Now, some samples (click play to listen):

- Bill Withers, Use Me Up. Exclusively using the clav…

- The Disco Track 9 is a song off the Boogie Nights soundtrack affectionately known as “track 9.” The main instrument is the clavinet once it gets into the breakdown. Sorry, this is a long, very repetitive song but good stuff… The echo-ey “Riders on the Storm” sounding instrument is the Rhodes piano as well.

- Soulive, Uncle Junior. This is a good Hammond Organ-heavy song… There are only three guys playing; the organ player is also playing the bass.

- Chick Corea, Fickle Funk. A good Fender Rhodes-heavy song by Chick Corea…

- Beastie Boys, Namaste – Good example of the Wurlitzer in action…

– Hugo Montenegro and His Orchestra – Moog Power.mp3

- And finally, a song that ties them all together… Chameleon by Herbie Hancock & The Headhunters. It was common practice to have some or all of them and play them all. Sometimes 2 at a time, one hand on each such as Herbie Hancock does. If you listen carefully, you can catch them all in there. Anything really really “scratchy” or echo-ie like the sound of a rubber band is the Moog. The solo at about 8 minutes in is him on the Rhodes. It is really hard to pick them all out, so fear not…

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Now some video:

Here’s a Wurlitzer demo some dude made off youtube:
( You’ll notice some similarities between it and the Rhodes as well… )

And here is a youtube video of a Rhodes in action. He’s just showing off a pedal there but it doesn’t change much (an effect he’s messing with called “vibrato”).

And finally, here is a live version of Herbie Hancock playing Chamelon Live in 1974. I found a bunch of copies on YouTube but never found a full length one. I uploaded this full length version that used to be on YouTube (so I was wondering where it went) but they shot it down because it’s too long (about 14 mintues) so I uploaded it to Vimeo.

When I first saw this, it blew my mind… Enjoy…

Herbie Hancock – Chameleon Live 1974 from Andre Shoumatoff on Vimeo.

These are some of the popular, legendary Coltrane ballads. The smooth, soft, touching songs that just jam; the legendary Coltrane. These are some of his most famous.

The oddest thing is I wasn’t really that into Coltrane until relatively recently (post college, since about 2001).  I grew up playing the saxophone and by high school I was hitting pretty hard with the jazz music and a lot of my influences came from then or even by early college. 

I had plenty of vinyl, I had copies of my old man’s “My Favorite Things” (one of the most famous jazz albums of all times) but hadn’t gotten that into Coltrane. It was actually Miles, and my favorite album of all time (which is still right up there, was Mingus: Live at the Bohemia, that I was much more in to.

Charles Mingus

Anyway, here is a little John Colrane soul on this post’s music player.   Coltrane was sort of tall and thick.  Big round head and rounded nose, bulbus eyes.   There were really only about 8 years that he was in his damn prime according to me.  He had plenty of good stuff and a lot like Hendrix, I think he was in the war that’d ended by then.  By ’52 he was doing some pretty near stuff, and by ’58 he was playing some of the most incredible and soulful Jazz music in history.  Which is why we all know his name.

He, like Miles, struggled with heroin badly.  It sounds messed up but I think his music was pretty heavily influenced by the pain that this drug brought him.  It is just so soft, so touching, and unreal…